What's with the lack of voiceovers in the continuation of the main story

Not one line is voiced. Not one.

Was SE unable to secure long term contracts with the VO staff or something? You may or may not like the voice overs, but you should either have them throughout the storyline or not at all. Be consistent.

I wish someone at SE would weigh in on this. Other games with voiceovers did have them added to new content that came out.

Honestly, the voice overs were always inconsistent. They seem to come and go at random and makes the entire experience fairly jarring.

They cheap'd out on VA investment :D

Considering the quality (or lack thereof) of the storyline continuation... I wasn't surprised.

I really liked the main story... the "continuation" was garbage.

The voiceovers always seemed like something they threw in just to say they had them. Put in just enough early in the game to make people think there would be more. Probably wont get anymore until an expansion.

nothing exciting had happend in the continuation though it was merely that calm before the storm so to say introducing new villain moving HQ meanwhile the action is building in the background :x hopefully we get some next patch who knows~ or hopefully next expac gets alot more voice acting

I'm probably a minority, but I'm 100% ok with absolutely zero voice acting. I'd rather them just leave it out at this point.

Yea, the VA seems to mostly appear during major cutscenes, not really the small ones in between.

VA is fairly expensive. I'd rather they spend the money somewhere else.

I don't mind the lack of voice acting, but I just don't like how inconsistently it's placed throughout the game. I was sitting there thinking to myself that there was surely going to be at least one voice acted cutscene in the continuation of the main story, but nope.

Anyone who expected voice acting to continue has absolutely no appreciation for the extra costs voice acting in multiple regions would require just for small updates.

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

Honestly, the voice overs were always inconsistent. They seem to come and go at random and makes the entire experience fairly jarring.

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This, but also:

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

VA is fairly expensive. I'd rather they spend the money somewhere else.

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This. VA isn't essential for patch updates to story, IMO. I'd much prefer they save the money so we can have consistent VA in expansions rather than the rather jarring situation in the main story during the Garuda arc where seem to skip from voiced to silent back to voiced.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Anyone who expected voice acting to continue has absolutely no appreciation for the extra costs voice acting in multiple regions would require just for small updates.

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This applies to Free To Play games, however this is a game with a monthly fee and the game itself isn't free plus they have way more subscriptions than they expected. Non-FTP should translate to higher quality and full voice acting. Yeah it's pricy, but like I said, this game isn't a charity, we pay, so it's not really acceptable how they handled voice overs, either really do it or don't, this cheapening-out on the costs of VA isn't very welcomed.

They learned from Bioware.

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Originally Posted by Lukahn

I'm probably a minority, but I'm 100% ok with absolutely zero voice acting. I'd rather them just leave it out at this point.

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Same. I honestly think VO can help, but in the case of this game and the way it was executed, it should really only be used for the intro and the end (however many "ends" there are in MMORPGs).

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

VA is fairly expensive. I'd rather they spend the money somewhere else.

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no its not expensive to hire VA's for a few lines. they dont even make that much money for a whole season on a cartoon they make like $50k a year unless there big stars then of course there going to want big money.

cost way more to pay people to bullshit at there desk milking time on a project.

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

VA is fairly expensive. I'd rather they spend the money somewhere else.

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Yeah!

Courtesans and Moogle-dust.

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Originally Posted by indira

no its not expensive to hire VA's for a few lines. they dont even make that much money for a whole season on a cartoon they make like $50k a year unless there big stars then of course there going to want big money.

cost way more to pay people to bullshit at there desk milking time on a project.

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The japanese VA are big stars.

I'm thinking they will add them in the future. I hope they do at least. It's a matter of priorities at this point in time.

The English VAs are pretty bad by current game standards... as much as I would like to hear voiced dialogue, I'd really rather some talented people fandub it or something, and let SE put that money into making the game better.

For the expansion they should bring back the localisation team that did FFXII, still imo the best voice acting in any Final Fantasy.

They have the money now from all the subs to do the game justice in English.

Voice acting is cheap unless you're getting someone who is already a celebrity to begin with. If you look at the works a particular voice actor done (English or Japanese), you'll see plenty of no name game/Anime along with the big name stuff. Sure, that guy probably expects to be paid more for a bigger game, but it's not like he charges $1 million for a marquee title and $100 for a game you've never heard of.

I'm okay if the game has no voice acting but obviously the game does have voice acting somewhere. It almost feels like they had a few lines just so that they can say they have voice acting.

Speaking of which…. what the heck happened to the narrator?

This game has one problem, lack of emotions.

Inconsistent VA for NPC and also our very own characters.

The worst part for me still is, whenever we are doing the main scenario, NPC questions us and all we do is just "Nod". Gets me sleepy during each cutscene seeing my character just nodding to everything they say lol.

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Originally Posted by Gaddes

The English VAs are pretty bad by current game standards... as much as I would like to hear voiced dialogue, I'd really rather some talented people fandub it or something, and let SE put that money into making the game better.

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You can change the voice dialog to the Japanese language (and probably others I haven't tried) That's what I did. Sounds awesome hearing their Japanese voices and I really enjoy the voice acting. Realistically though, I want to see more voice acting. So many scenes would have been better with VA. They need to either have none at all or go all out and have more. The main story line should have va for every cut scene imo. It just seems so weird for them to have some but then further in you have less and less.

It's pretty obvious the whole reason for the inconsistent amount of voice overs in the game is simply because it's a concession to allowing the player to create their own name for their character. Notice how modern Bioware games like The Old Republic or Mass Effect actually still lock your character into a partial default name? It's because it's that name that your character is canonically referred to in voice overs.

The level of voice synthesis technology at this time simply cannot replicate any name created by the player. Hence because the story frequently has npcs calling your character by name, those scenes cannot be voiceovered (for the ending particularly, SE got around this by simply

having npcs call the player by the generic terms 'champion' or 'Warrior of Light'

).

So yeah, it's clearly a design choice SE made - and they went for the 'give players more freedom with how they create their character at the expense of fully voiced cutscenes and dialogue'.

Who cares?

The VA that was in the game before was distracting, inconsistent and terrible. I'm glad it's 0% VA in 2.1, and I hope it doesn't come back unless they intend to actually do it properly.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Not one line is voiced. Not one.

Was SE unable to secure long term contracts with the VO staff or something? You may or may not like the voice overs, but you should either have them throughout the storyline or not at all. Be consistent.

I wish someone at SE would weigh in on this. Other games with voiceovers did have them added to new content that came out.

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You act as if even half of the main story is voiced...

I mean, i want full voice-overs too, but it isn't really proper to say this is a problem in the continuation of the main story... This is a problem from page one of the main story script.

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Originally Posted by Gaddes

The English VAs are pretty bad by current game standards... as much as I would like to hear voiced dialogue, I'd really rather some talented people fandub it or something, and let SE put that money into making the game better.

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I'll definitely agree with this. They chose poorly for the English VA's, and it sounds like they phoned in half the lines; And i agree with the fandub, get Teamfourstar on this thing *nods* then they'll have good voice overs and 'star' power :P

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

It's pretty obvious the whole reason for the inconsistent amount of voice overs in the game is simply because it's a concession to allowing the player to create their own name for their character. Notice how modern Bioware games like The Old Republic or Mass Effect actually still lock your character into a partial default name? It's because it's that name that your character is canonically referred to in voice overs.

The level of voice synthesis technology at this time simply cannot replicate any name created by the player. Hence because the story frequently has npcs calling your character by name, those scenes cannot be voiceovered

(for the ending particularly, SE got around this by simply having npcs call the player by the generic terms 'champion' or 'Warrior of Light').

So yeah, it's clearly a design choice SE made - and they went for the 'give players more freedom with how they create their character at the expense of fully voiced cutscenes and dialogue'.

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In WoW, there were several voiced scenes where people were talking to you and usually no moniker was given to you because it was obvious they were talking to you (or about you), so they left your name in print but didn't actually say anything close to a name or a title half the time; Then, when they were talking to other NPC's, they made sure to voice their names to make it obvious they were not talking about and/or to you now.

So it worked out to be something like this for most conversations...
What you read - "U'tabia's back! Hurray!"
What you heard - "You're back! Hurray!" or "She's back! Hurray!"

There's numerous ways to get around voice problems when you have variable main characters, Square just took the laziest route and simply didn't voice half the things.

Yeah and Old Republic did voiceovers for all classes and genders. SE only has to do it for 1 class per say, simply Warrior of Light or Adventurer, or champion, whatever you are in the story. It really isn't that expensive in the grand scheme of things. Not with 1.5 million players paying $10-15 a month....

One week covers all voiceover costs for all content until an expansion.

because they probably guess the game wont last to much longer and dont wanna pour money into voice acting. lol or just cause they know most people skip por ignore the cut scene anyways.

They could have put this to the fans who would have done it for free, especially one time only characters in the storyline.

Could have made it a competition and the best that were recorded would be implemented after signing a waver to say that it is for free and contribution based only.

Considering the VA has to be done in multiple languages and requires the plot to stick to certain characters and it also involves the international licencing fees for the tracks I'd say I prefer them to spend that money on just better cutscenes as a whole rather than try to voice them.

The japanese track is okay but I'd feel more comfortable if I knew the english VA's lost their jobs for all that cringe-worthy posing they did. It's weird to say this but even XIII had better actors.

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Originally Posted by Seif

I'd feel more comfortable if I knew the english VA's lost their jobs for all that cringe-worthy posing they did. It's weird to say this but even XIII had better actors.

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Yda's English voice was great. :-(

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Originally Posted by Seif

The japanese track is okay but I'd feel more comfortable if I knew the english VA's lost their jobs for all that cringe-worthy posing they did. It's weird to say this but even XIII had better actors.

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WTF happened with the VAing? They had the same voice actors for 1.0 and it wasn't nearly as bad!

http://youtu.be/t2ahpI7XvlU?t=2m17s (Yda and Popolino)

http://youtu.be/WwrX6exd1jk?t=3m2s (Y'shtola)

They all sound like they are proclaiming something to their subjects now, especially Minfilia.

It's obvious they can do way better, but something went wrong with the last recordings.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

Yda's English voice was great. :-(

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I've herd all the voice actors the Japanese sounds really lazy to me the English ones sound with more effort, not to mention Yda is awesome!

The general dubbing sounds as if the staff asked some distant relatives for help who needed some money and who have absolutely no idea how dubbing works. So in my opinion...i am perfectly fine with no more voice over in the game.
There are exceptions of course.....

I knew they wouldn't keep that up. Seems every aspect of this game is lacking for me. But I'm still playing hoping the game will improve from just a Duty que lobby.

Put the money into something actually important like content.

Voice overs are great the first time... then they are done. So all that money for 1 play through. Not really a good investment in a mmo in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Xatsh

Put the money into something actually important like content.

Voice overs are great the first time... then they are done. So all that money for 1 play through. Not really a good investment in a mmo in my opinion.

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You realize that's not quite how things work in this system, right?

The Devs most likely work on salary, and the only way money will -ever- get us more content is if they hire more staff and bloat the design teams, but even in that there's only so much work that can be split between the design teams, so there's effectively a 'cap' on how much money you can put into your development teams and expect to get something worthwhile out of them. There are some things that can't be worked on at the same time.

After the staff has been paid, the 'excess' money can however be poured into better servers, voice-over work and other things before they bank the rest of it as profit; They're not really doing that though, as we still have poor servers and next to no voice-work (or sub-par voice work).